Four-footed love stories from farm days

Note: Most newspaper content reprinted here is incomplete and delayed. Want it all? Sooner? Subscribe to our full print and online editions by calling (559) 674-4207 and get both editions for the price of one!

I’ve only had two pets that I loved dearly: a cat named Spunky and a short-haired dog called Peppy.

Both displayed signs of abuse and abandonment, and both behaved like former indoor pets. Adjusting to a rural life outdoors in Madera County would be a challenge for them.

Spunky, a white tabby with gray tiger markings, ran away several times in the beginning, but I would coax her home, usually by crouching down and meowing plaintively. Eventually she warmed to people, but she never learned her given name. Instead she came running whenever I meowed. She never ceased to be a source of affection and attention until she died of old age when I began high school.

In the winter of my third year in Madera High School, God unexpectedly gifted us with Peppy, a short black dog with white and gold markings. Peppy had no trouble warming to women, but to my dismay she feared any and all men. The first time I held her she trembled so. I hugged her to me before realizing it wasn’t the weather that made her shiver. It was fear. So I let her be. She grew to tolerate me as days passed, but nothing more...